


Integral

by orphan_account



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), College AU, Gen, I have no idea what I'm doing, I'll probably change stuff as I go along, in which killua is a sheltered bby child, title what's that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 14:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4353338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Until he got to college, Killua was a sheltered child, protected from the world by a mother who told him that, when he was grown, his brilliance would light the way for millions. Unfortunately, he quickly discovered, upon entering the real world, that the only blinding light he would be providing would be while he was crashing and burning. Thankfully, his roommate made it his personal mission to teach Killua about all of the secrets of the world he'd been protected from.</p><p>Otherwise known as the time that Killua was a sheltered bby child and Gon showed him all the things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Move-in

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all! This is my first fic here on AO3, so I apologize if the tagging is all jacked up and stuff. (I've never been that good at tagging anyway.) I'm not exactly sure where this idea came from, except that I recently had a conversation with my cousin about what it was like to go from being a homeschooler to a student at a public university, and I wanted to write something college AU. I apologize if this isn't that interesting for other people to read, but I'm having fun writing it, so I suspect I will continue it. ^^

It seemed like he had been preparing to come to this place for his whole life, and yet it was so foreign to him that he felt like he had never seen anything like it before.

He knew this notion was incorrect, if only because he could distinctly remember visiting the campus only a month previous, one out of the hundreds of students standing right on the cusp of adulthood, practically drooling over the idea of being let loose of their chains and unleashed on the real world as independent adults. That day had been a humid and overly-bright one, and all that he remembered of it, outside of how uncomfortable he had felt with the lingering and near-constant contact of strangers as they hurried alongside him through the halls of crowded buildings, was the silent undercurrent of confidence had built up over the course of the tour. He had been surrounded by his peers, an imbecilic lot with no idea what they were getting themselves into, and after he had left their presence for the day he had gone away sure that he was better prepared for this whole college thing than anyone he had ever met.

Now, standing in the quickly-emptying lobby of his dorm with nothing to show for his existence but a small packet of keys and a card with his name printed on it in drab lettering, he wasn’t so sure about that.

A part of his brain, the part that was used to making quick decisions and asserting his superiority over his siblings, was firmly urging him to take a step forward, to approach the youngish man with a friendly smile sitting behind the desk. The part of him that felt out of place, wounded and confused like a plant ripped out of the ground, saw the exhaustion creeping into the edges of the friendly smile and hesitated, unsure of how to proceed.

Before his thoughts could claw themselves further from his grasp, the man, a red-headed guy with tired brown eyes, called out to him from across the room.

“Hey, are you trying to find your room?”

His head snapped up at the noise, but when his mind processed that this was, indeed, the question he had been wanting to ask, he shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded with a casual noise of affirmation.

“What’s your room number?”

He pulled his hand out of his pocket, flipped the paper envelope holding his keys upside-down to read the numbers scrawled there in a hurried script.

“501B.”

“Okay,” the man said, absentmindedly waving to a woman in university colors who was hurrying by the desk, “so you’re on the fifth floor. Turn right at the elevators, you’re the first door on the right side of the hall. Your room will have a ‘B’ painted on the doorframe.”

He found himself impressed with the efficiency with which the man had delivered this information, and committed the directions to memory.

“Thanks,” he said casually, sliding the keys into his pocket and turning toward the elevators at the end of the hall with all of the confidence of someone who actually knew what he was doing.

In truth, simply getting to the fifth floor was quite an ordeal, with endless flocks of flustered freshmen and doting parents attacking the elevator each time its doors opened. By the time he’d made it to his floor, he was overheated and angry, just barely on the edge of growling out of irritation at the proximity of the strangers.

A small part of him wondered if this whole thing would seem less disorienting with his parents there, but he shoved the thought to the back of his mind and pressed on toward his room.

The door was already open, propped ajar with a plastic crate of some sort. He found this a little odd, and a sharp pang of anxiety lanced through his chest when it occurred to him that his roommate could already be in the room.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to living with other people, it was just the idea of living with someone that he’d never met that he worried about. He wasn’t exactly a charismatic person (if there had been any doubt about that, it had been erased during orientation), and he knew he gave off a vibe that made people want to run away rather than stay in the same room. On top of that, he knew very little about the person he’d been randomly assigned to. Sure, he had a name that showed up when he logged into the student portal of the university’s webpage, an email address that he could have used to contact the mysterious person had he chosen, but he knew nothing of what his roommate looked like, who he was, where he was from.

He could have emailed and asked, but he wasn’t particularly social, so he told himself he would just let his roommate initiate the contact. Days had stretched into weeks, and by the time it had occurred to him that he knew nothing of the person he was meant to share his living space with for a year, he was already packing his things to move in.

Pushing the door open with his foot, he stepped hesitantly inside. His sneakers hit tile floor, something he hadn’t expected. Upon closer inspection, he found that the entrance to the room led to a smallish kitchen area, perhaps the size of a glorified closet. Two doors opened out of it on opposite sides of a short countertop. The one of the left, labelled “A,” was being held open by a wiry man in a rumpled suit.

“Oi, Kurapika, you done moving boxes yet?”

So these were his suitemates. He let out a sigh of relief and immediately schooled his expression into a carefully blank mask.

A voice that was almost feminine floated back thick with irritation. “As I said before, I still have three boxes of textbooks in my car. If you’re really that pressed for something to do, you could go down and get them for me.”

The distinct sound of cardboard ripping carried through the doorway, followed by the dismembered carcass of a box. The taller man shoved it aside with his foot, and in doing so finally noticed the new presence in the room.

“Oh, hey!” The man put on an expression that was almost aggressively friendly. “Are you our suitemate?”

“Yup,” he replied without hesitation, trying to keep his voice low and smooth.

“Great! Oi, Kurapika! One of our suitemates finally showed up!”

The shuffling movement inside the room stopped, and a second person emerged from the doorway in a single fluid motion.

This man was considerably shorter than the first, with blond hair that fell around his shoulders and large brown eyes that were currently looking at him with muted interest.

“Oh, hello. What’s your name?”

The second man’s voice was smoother, calmer than the first’s, and he found himself drawn to answer to it.

“Killua.”

“Nice to meet you, Killua!” the first man exclaimed, still leaning against the door. “I’m Leorio, and this loser is Kurapika!” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of Kurapika, to add to his point.

Killua allowed himself a small smirk, thinking it was probably appropriate in the situation. “Yeah, nice to meet you. You two already know each other?”

“Unfortunately,” came Kurapika’s swift and exasperated reply. Leorio pulled a face and made a noise that Killua didn’t know humans could make.

“What the—What do you mean, ‘unfortunately?’”

That was the beginning of a short-lived squabble between the two, Leorio screeching and Kurapika sighing insults at increasingly louder volumes. Killua watched with detached amusement, cataloguing information for later use.

From what he understood, the gist of it was that the two had gone to high school together, and had agreed to room together because neither liked the idea of being stuck with some random person from halfway across the world. However, as he could see, they didn’t exactly get along, which meant that he was in for an interesting semester.

“When’s your roommate getting here?” Leorio asked abruptly, cutting off Kurapika as he was saying something about Leorio’s attempts at arguing being “the same puerile finger-pointing maneuvers employed by prepubescent boys caught in conflict about the perpetrator of a petty affront.” Killua’s eyes instantly shot over to his bedroom door, noticing that it had not yet been disturbed.

“I dunno,” he replied coolly, stepping over a pile of disassembled boxes on the floor and working the key into the lock. “I haven’t talked to him yet.”

“Random?” Leorio asked casually as Kurapika disappeared inside the room again, resuming his previous ministrations.

“Yup.”

“Ah, good luck!”

“Yeah.”

With that acknowledgement, Killua pushed the door open, the smell of plastic and the cold of the air conditioner immediately slamming into him.

The room was pristine, untouched, telling Killua that his roommate had not yet arrived. Two beds sat opposite each other, with a large glass window situated on the wall between them. Two desks had been crammed together just inside the doorway as well, creating a sort of bottleneck that Killua found himself having to squeeze through in order to set his bag down on one of the mattresses. He didn’t recall being told that he had to take a specific one, so he just chose one at random.

After putting down his bag, which contained mostly clothing, he sat down on the bed and let himself just stare at the wall for a moment.

So this was it, huh? This is what he had been looking forward to all these years?

Something about that made unease flutter in his chest. Already, he had discovered that he was capable of being flustered by this whole “college” thing. The very thought made him anxious, because he, of all people, should be prepared for this, for academia, for independence. So what if he wasn’t great at the whole social thing? That was only a small part of it, right?

Hopping off his bed, he decided to go collect the remainder of his possessions from his brother, who was downstairs waiting on him. He had probably gotten pretty impatient by now, forced to wait on Killua as he forced himself through a series of mini-crises.

It took less time than he expected to get his belongings unloaded from his brother’s deceptively small car, although he supposed he didn’t have nearly as much as most of the people he’d seen in the elevator. Rather than needing two or three carts to carry everything up, everything he’d brought was stacked neatly so that he could carry it without much trouble.

As he readjusted his burden, he looked at his brother, who was watching him with blank black eyes, obviously bored by the task he’d been charged with. A small part of Killua felt perturbed that this, probably the most important day of his life, was boring to his older brother, but he decided it didn’t really matter.

“Thanks, Illumi. See you guys later.”

“Bye, Kil,” was all the man said in response as he turned away from his younger brother and started his car.

The door was still propped open, and he could hear even from the hallway Kurapika and Leorio arguing about something related to a dresser drawer. Chuckling under his breath, he eased his way into the room and slipped past them without engaging their interest. He would have plenty of time to make meaningless small talk with them later.

With one hand, he grabbed the doorknob to steady it as he went to unlock it, but was surprised when the door gave way easily.

His center of balance upset, he toppled forward, dropping the boxes he’d been carrying as he hit the ground in an awkward heap.

“Oh! Are you okay?”

A shrill voice made Killua’s blood freeze, and he jerked his eyes up to his surroundings, heart pounding.

He couldn’t have been gone more than fifteen minutes, but somehow, the pristine room he’d left had been transformed into an explosion of clothing, paper, and sundry other knick knacks. Clothes were strewn about the floor on the side of the room opposite the mattress he had chosen, books stacked haphazardly on top of the windowsill in a precarious arrangement. From his angle, he could see picture frames of different sizes scattered across one of the desks in no particular arrangement.

A hand appeared in his line of vision, and the anxiety swelled, making his mouth dry.

“Did you trip on something?”

The face that followed the hand was that of a guy who couldn’t be older than a young-looking eighteen. His honey-colored eyes were wide and round, looking like they belonged on someone considerably younger than a college student. His hair was a spiky spray of black, and his mouth was upturned into a smile so genuine that Killua instantly felt suspicious of it.

Deciding that taking the hand was probably the right thing to do in the situation, he grabbed on to the offered arm, surprised by the warmth of the boy’s tan skin.

The world reoriented itself, and then he was standing in front of the boy, staring at him head-on.

“You’re my roommate?” he found himself asking, trying to find some semblance of consistency to hang on to.

“Yup! Isn’t that great?”

Killua wasn’t sure whether that was sarcasm or not. He felt his eyebrows furrow in spite of himself, suddenly feeling introverted and unconfident. It was an unfamiliar feeling, and it made him want to crawl under his bed and hide.

“You’re Killua, right?” the boy asked enthusiastically, voice reaching a frantic pitch of excitement.

Disoriented and a bit off-put, Killua nodded and hummed, “Yeah.”

In a gesture that Killua was pretty sure wasn't a standard greeting for people their age, his roommate quickly closed the distance between them, sweeping him into a hug that was so painful and so unexpected that he let out an involuntary squeak of discomfort.

In response to the squeak, the boy released his surprisingly stifling hold and took a single step backward, smile still beaming with the brilliance of the sun.

“Nice to meet you! I’m Gon!”


	2. Ramen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm back! (I'm surprised—I normally flake out on stuff at this point.) This chapter is based off of that quote from Parks and Rec: "I tried to make ramen in the coffee pot, and I broke everything."

“Killua?”

His roommate’s voice was clear and genuine, free of the snide judgement that he was sure he had earned with his most recent foray into the world of responsibility.

“Yeah, Gon?”

 There was a short pause, as if Gon was trying to think of how to phrase the question, and then, “Uh… what are you doing?”

 It had been less than forty-eight hours since Killua had moved into the dorms, and he already was painfully aware of how little he actually knew about being an actual adult. Sure, he had anticipated running into a couple of bumps on the road to his inevitable success, but he hadn’t thought that those bumps would show up before he’d even stepped foot inside a classroom.

Classes were supposed to start tomorrow, and with them, all of the campus restaurants were supposed to open. Killua had only realized they weren’t yet keeping their normal hours when he had gone downstairs that morning to find breakfast in the cafeteria, and had instead found himself standing outside a locked door as rain started drizzling from the dreary sky. Now he was locked inside their tiny dorm room, trying to find a way to feed himself with the various packaged foods that their suitemates had casually said they could help themselves to.

He’d never been happier for a stranger’s generosity. Now, if only he knew how to do this whole “cooking thing.”

Yes, Killua had anticipated some bumps in the road. What he hadn’t anticipated was that one of those bumps would have manifested itself in him accidentally destroying his suitemates’ coffee pot.

“I was trying to make ramen,” he said quietly, knowing now what a ludicrous statement it was. If only he had known fifteen minutes ago that his innocent attempts at feeding himself would signal the coming of catastrophe, he would have just eaten cereal instead.

Gon inched closer, raising himself up on his toes to see over his shoulder. Killua’s face burned with the scrutiny.

“In the coffee pot…?”

There it was, that sharp edge of something malicious that made Killua want to round on him and shout his defense. He probably would have, if not for the fact that, standing with the evidence right in front of him, he knew he deserved Gon’s criticism.

“Yes, in the coffee pot,” was all he could bring himself to say, hunger and irritation and embarrassment bearing down on him in a way that made him want to kill something and lock himself in his closet.

Gon was now standing beside him, looking at the countertop. “Why…?”

“Well, we don’t have a microwave…” That had been the first flaw in his plan. Killua’s microwave-cooking skills were spot-on, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that, due to a lack of communication on all ends, no one had brought a microwave for their pathetic excuse for a kitchen. Fortunately, they had a small oven that looked like it would explode if asked nicely, but they didn’t have any pots or pans, from what he could tell. Not to mention, he wasn’t sure if he could successfully boil water without incident.

Beside him, the silence of Gon’s quiet breathing was replaced by light, bubbling laughter, laughter free of the derision he had been expecting. Turning to Killua with an innocent grin, he said, “You know you can make it on the stove, right?”

No, actually. That is to say, until the coffee pot catastrophe, the thought hadn’t even occurred to him.

“Yeah…” he muttered, trying to hide the undoubtedly crimson flush of his cheeks behind a scowl.

There was a short, amicable pause during which Killua stared pointedly at the explosion of half-cooked noodles and floury water that was plastered against the insides of the coffee pot and dripping slowly from the counter. Then a hand slapped on his shoulder, making him jump.

“You don’t know how, do you?”

Gon’s voice was airy and filled to the brim with amusement. Feeling stupider by the second, Killua rounded on him, baring his teeth with a growl.

“Of course I do, idiot! Who doesn’t know how to boil water?” He fought the urge to smack Gon in his stupidly innocent, stupidly grinning face.  

This just set Gon to giggling like a ten-year-old boy. A faint part of Killua wished he were a better cook so he could boil Gon’s head.

“Here, I’ll help you,” he said when his laughing had subsided to the point that he could speak. Before Killua could protest, could insist that he certainly did not need the idiot’s help with something so simple, Gon had already produced a smallish pot and a roll of paper towels, as if by magic.

 “Where did you—”

 “You didn’t check under the sink?”

 Killua let those words sink in, face burning as Gon carried the coffee pot over to wash it out. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Geez, what was wrong with him today?

 Suddenly realizing that Gon was cleaning up after him, he sprang into action, absolutely refusing to let his roommate take care of him as if he were his mother.

 The two boys made short work of cleaning up the aftermath of the coffee pot explosion, despite the fact that neither was particularly tidy and the noodles on the inside of the pot had been practically baked on. Just as they were rearranging the kitchen to look clean again, Kurapika materialized in his doorway, a bag slung over his shoulder and an eyebrow quirked.

 “Hello, Kurapika!” Gon practically sang, putting down a bowl that he had found in the cabinets so that he could wave at the unwitting blond.

 “Hello, Gon, Killua. Are you guys making dinner?”

 “Yep!” came the immediate, cheery response.

“Where are you off to?” Killua added, trying to divert his attention from any remnants of the recent disaster.

Kurapika held up a piece of paper with blue numbers printed on it in blocks. “I’m going to find the classrooms my classes are supposed to be in. I should’ve done it earlier, but Leorio needed someone to drive him to the bookstore to get his textbooks, and he never does anything quickly.” He sighed, sliding the paper into his bag with unnecessary precision.

“Hey, Killua, we should do that!”

Oh, that was something that Killua actually did know he should have done, but he had been too distracted with the whole fiasco of finding food.

Before he could voice the less-than-polite thoughts that were racing through his head, Kurapika politely excused himself and pulled the suite door closed behind him.

“Ehehe, good thing he didn’t notice,” Gon laughed conspiratorially when the door shut behind Kurapika. “I think that’s his coffee pot.”

At that realization, Killua let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t known Kurapika for very long at all, but something about the guy gave him the distinct impression that an argument with him would not be pleasant. He wondered faintly why he and Leorio hadn’t killed each other yet.

Gon snapped Killua’s attention back to the task at hand, and the two made themselves busy for the next few minutes with filling the pot that Gon had procured with water and getting it to boil. Killua watched with something between relief and irritation as Gon explained all of the simple things that went into boiling things, such as making sure the pot didn’t boil over and how to differentiate between a simmer and a rolling boil. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as he’d made it in his head, and yet he wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t have made a mess if he’d tried to do it without Gon’s disjointed guidance.

“And you can add salt to make it boil sooner!”

“That’s bull,” Killua said immediately.

Gon scrunched his face in an expression of annoyance that, once again, looked too young for him. “It’s not! It’s a real thing! My aunt says that the salt makes the water boil faster!”

“That’s technically right,” Killua found himself saying, sliding his hands in the pockets of his shorts and leaning against the countertop as Gon dropped the noodle brick in the boiling water, “but the difference that a tiny amount of salt makes is so small it’s basically negligible. To make any real difference, you’d have to have the solution be like, twenty percent salt. Granted, ramen probably is twenty percent salt...”

“Ehh?”

Gon looked wounded, as if he’d been lied to and it was taking him more than a moment to reorient his life on its new axis. Killua sighed, scooting closer to the pot so that he could watch the noodles soften in the hot water.

“It’s basically an urban legend, idiot. Any halfwit who’s had a general chemistry class knows that.”

He considered for a brief moment explaining the specifics to Gon, but ultimately decided against it. Although he’d learned the day he moved in, while Gon had chattered at him for endless hours about himself and his life and random things he found interesting , that Gon was a zoology major, something told him the boy didn’t have much of a head for things like heat capacity and ebullioscopic constants.

He expected Gon to whine at him about being called an idiot, or at the very least mumble irritably about Killua’s apparent keenness to show off. Instead, when he turned to his roommate, he was met with one of those blinding grins.

“Wow, you’re really smart!”

Heat rushed up to Killua’s face suddenly as he flushed in embarrassment.

“Shut up, idiot. I’m not that smart. You’re just stupid.”

That made Gon laugh again, which Killua found vaguely annoying. However, a small part of him, the part that wasn’t used to the lightheartedness that Gon seemed to bring to every room he stepped into, found it almost… endearing?

For the next few minutes, Killua and Gon stood over the pot of boiling water, talking casually about the classes they were registered for and their expectations for the next semester. They learned that they were both in an introductory biology course together, which Killua, surprisingly, found exciting rather than annoying. Gon talked animatedly about upper level vertebrate zoology courses and biology labs where he would get to play with dogs, and Killua found himself smirking at his enthusiasm. At least he was excited for his career choice.

“Hey, it’s done!”

At those words, Killua instantly snapped to attention. He didn’t even really like ramen that much, but he was so hungry and so angry at his newly found nemesis that the idea of food struck him as genuinely exciting.

Gon carefully separated it into the bowls he’d prepared, giving Killua more of the noodles and taking more of the broth for himself. Killua noted with a detached form of amusement that their personal preferences complemented each other’s surprisingly well.

The ramen tasted like salt and plastic, but he didn’t particularly care.

“So, what now?” he asked, suddenly coming to the realization that they would have to find some other form of entertainment now that their debacle with the boiling water was over.

He didn’t notice until after he’d asked the question that he had automatically assumed that Gon would want to hang out with him.

“You wanna play GTA?”

The immediacy of the response, the genuine friendliness in Gon’s tone caught him off guard. He had at least expected hesitation, an awkward silence, something.

“What’s that?”

“You’ve never played GTA?!” Gon sounded scandalized. Killua allowed himself a small chuckle.

“Okay, teach me about it then.”

“Sure thing!”  
  
And he followed Gon back into their room, unsure of the adventure that awaited him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is going to turn into killugon fluff, isn't it


End file.
